


「Endings and Beginnings; 結束與開始」

by yuren



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: F/M, Fluff, It's A Tad Suggestive, Lazy Mornings, On Tumblr It's At Exactly 3000 Words, This Was My Pre-Game For 402, Timeskip Spoilers, i did tear up while writing this :'), it's supposed to be fluff but ngl, sunday morning fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26340157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuren/pseuds/yuren
Summary: A Sunday with you at home. This is the beginning to an end.
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	「Endings and Beginnings; 結束與開始」

The day is warmer than usual, sun brighter than usual. Kageyama is more tired than usual for a regular Sunday morning. Perhaps it’s due to the pure exhilaration of this season, with the starting and ending matches being against the most troublesome person he knows. Perhaps it’s because of the start of a new era next season, where he will be halfway around the world, competing in a whole other realm of the Confédération Européenne de Volleyball. Perhaps, maybe, possibly, it’s because of the looming end of an era, of a team, of a home that makes him look a bit more forward to his Sunday mornings. 

Whatever it is, Kageyama is tired, and he only wants to spend this Sunday at home. Sunday, his warmest day. Home, his warmest place. You, his warmest person. You are home, it is Sunday, and he has just showered from his morning workout.

Ruffling his hair with a towel, Kageyama gazes down at you still soundly asleep, nestled deep in the soft, cloudy sheets. Sometime between him leaving and returning from his run, you had stolen his pillow and wrapped your arms around it, head burrowed tenaciously in the surrogate warmth.

A small smile graces his face — a natural one, not those obligatory grins that haunted the covers of Volleyball Monthly — and Kageyama drops the towel onto the nightstand. Carefully prying half of the covers from your form, he slips back under them and turns to face you. 

A stream of morning light dances across his face. Light breeze tumbles past the open windows, and sways its mellow current through the curtains. Kageyama watches you, face faintly aglow in the backlit frames of the morning sun, hair still tousled from last night, and he sighs. He will be the first to admit that Sundays will be the first thing that he misses most.

For Kageyama Tobio, Japan’s best setter, Asia’s best and worst CF star, and soon-to-be aspiration to all underrepresented hopefuls around the world, has never felt more at home than in his bed, on a Sunday morning, with you. 

“Tobio?”

Kageyama surfaces from his thoughts as he refocuses on your features.

“Morning,” he murmurs, simply content with watching you wake up.

You blink, squinting blearily at him as you reach out to place a warm, heavy hand on his cheeks. Kageyama leans into your touch, and a languid smile spreads across your face. You haphazardly push away the pillow in your arms and scoot forward until you’re right up against the man who has decided to join you back in bed. 

“Good morning, love,” you reply, lips grazing the fresh, soft linen of his shirt, right over his steady heartbeat. Your hand moves to drape under his arm, pressing your face into his chest, and you take a slow, grounding breath. Kageyama chuckles softly as he wraps his arm around you, pulling you perfectly close in a lazy embrace. 

Warm, tender, and safe. Your lover is all muscles and toned edges. Many late nights and early mornings, you’ve worshipped the fruition of his dedicated training and meticulously balanced lifestyle. But within the muscles and sinews, you most adore the softer sighs, the gentler edges. You committed to memory the cottony, unspeakably soft warmth that breathes humanity into his caresses and the loving heart that pulsates against your skin. 

Kageyama tilts his head to rest comfortably on the crown of your head. A little smile sets on his lips as he relaxes into the way that your body is pressed against his. 

“What are you doing?” He mumbles, a tinge of confusion laced in his voice as he feels your breaths resonate with his. He has trained his breathing to a slow, well-paced tempo, and Kageyama knows well that yours normally inhales a little faster than his own. 

“Smelling you.” Comes your muffled, unabashed reply. Your words flutter against the downy fibres of his shirt, blooming gentle kisses onto his skin.

Kageyama’s brows scrunch together in confusion. “Why?”

He had used your body wash, and while he will never voluntarily bring this up, he has in fact not once used his own since you moved in together. 

“Because you smell good,” you grin, feeling his heartbeat pick up just a little bit. “Like really good.”

Kageyama suppresses a shiver as he mutters out a flustered reply. 

“That makes no sense, you dummy.”

You chuckle softly. You do not mean to tease him; you just want to linger in the moment a little longer, to bask in these soft, tender mornings that you will surely miss more than anything. The way he always comes home, straight to you, once his morning workouts are done; the way he will wake you up with the gentlest expression, one that no other soul will ever see on Kageyama Tobio; the way the sunlight is now kissing the edges of his profile, casting an almost ephemeral glow on his features, you understand. This is the closest to eternity you will get, and you want to relish in this hearth forevermore. But an end is looming.

Trailing your hands along his broad chest, up and around his neck, you shift closer to him. You nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck, directly inhaling the scent of his freshly-showered skin, feeling his heartbeat waltz with your own. 

“It’s different,” you explain as you rest your cheeks against his warmth. “There’s something under the soap, something I’ll really, really miss. Kind of like what makes sunlight warm.”

“But the sunlight is warm,” Kageyama frowns. “That’s what it’s supposed to be.”

He feels your quiet laughter trickle along his collarbone, straight into his stirring heart.

“Hmm,” you think for a moment. “I guess a better comparison would be that it’s kind of like what makes a house a home, Tobio.”

Kageyama feels your grin spread onto his skin as his breath hitches.

He gets it. Of course he does. He knows that even if he did sneak your entire stash of body wash to Europe, it would not ease his homesick heart. At the beginning and end of his days, he needs your presence, exactly as it is being gifted to him in this moment now. You, with your breathing evened out into an easy, comfortable exhale, and you, with the simple sincerity that sets alight his already warmer than usual skin. You, it is all you, with the unspoken understanding that you will give him space to think, to process thoughts in a space curated just for him.

This space that Kageyama now revels in had once been confusing for him. After all, a constant emptiness, homesickness, was something that had accompanied him since the abrupt end to his childhood innocence. In the years of reaching for the top and being the best, Kageyama could not reconcile the fact that underneath the pure love for the sport, there was also a deep craving for a sense of belonging. As a living, breathing being, Kageyama also needs a home, a home he had once been blessed with from the beginning. 

_“Tobio left his slobber all over my volleyball again!” Miwa-nee would angrily complain._

_“How about another round of sets, Tobio, my boy?” Kazuyo-san would proudly suggest._

Childhood had been a whirlwind of blessings, one so fleeting, so mortal. With time and all things natural, his blessings flickered out one by one, like dying flames.

Miwa-nee left first, teenage dreams surfacing. 

Then, Kazuyo-san too left home for good. 

From the glory of his formative years, Kageyama fell to the depths of adolescent hell. He hadn’t understood it at the time, young and naive as he had been, but what he truly needed was a friend. 

Kageyama wanted a home, a sense of belonging. And when the home at hearth went up in a wisp of pitiless smoke, he had thought that he could find it in the one constant in his life, the one without an end. So he went looking for this piece of missing heart on the court. 

At Kitagawa Daichi, he had thought that Oikawa-san could perhaps understand him, that they both just wanted to keep the game going. But Oikawa-san also scared him, and young Tobio became confused. Didn’t they just want to keep playing more volleyball? Tobio didn’t understand. He tried, and tried, with Oikawa-san, with Iwaizumi-san, with Kunimi, with Kindaichi. And then, in the end, the flame snuffed out before it could even begin.

The game came to an end. 

Picking up the pieces of his tattered efforts, Kageyama remained undeterred, just a bit more guarded, a bit less of an ingénue. He still firmly believed that if he put his all into the sport, at least one forever friend would come, just as Kazuyo-san had promised all those years ago.

_“If you get really good... I promise you... Somebody who's even better will come along and find you.”_

A gentle wind billows through the curtains, splaying the sun’s ray on your sleeping form. Kageyama feels a soft hiccup escape you as you shift in your sleep. You have dozed off again, he grins. The frown unfurls from his pensive features as he smoothes the clustered hair off of your neck. 

Let us enjoy this day. An ending and a beginning are awaiting at tomorrow’s bay.

Just like so many years ago, the winds of change, a spark that kindled the lone, barren hearth. An end, a beginning. A single match dropped, a murder of crows. A team that fanned the fire, feeding this wounded crow more and more, encouraging him with all his flaws and all his sullen, overbearing bluntness. They saw his sincerity, his confusion, his heart within the flames, and nurtured it with their own, the beginning to an end. 

Kageyama found his home in a very long while. In truth, it hadn’t been that long in the grand scheme of things. But to a lost, exhausted Tobio, Karasuno was a chorus of “welcome home” after years of mumbling “I’m back” with only his own echoes to look forward to. Karasuno was a sense of belonging in a long time. A home.

So, as with all things natural, the end to a beginning fluttered past, as silent as an equinox’s breeze. His partner fell besides him, and he — no, they — lost to Kamomedai and their journey stopped and they could no longer play together and everything felt like it was out of his control again and he was going to lose his home. Kageyama floundered. His team, his home, his family. The end of all that. 

He cried, but as cliched as it was, and with a good reminder from Sugawara-san, Kageyama realized something. As they left Tokyo that spring, as the third years left, as they welcomed incoming first years, as Kageyama slowly picked up on what he had with his partner, he began to build upon the legacy of a home, together as a team, as a family. By the time that the first years became the third years and another end was looming, Kageyama got it. It was just an end, a beginning, ones of many that will come his way. This time, he did not cry. 

His home, he knows, is where his heart lies. His home is on the court, with likeminded people like Oikawa-san, who still scares him, but Kageyama could now differentiate the nuances of Oikawa-san’s fearsome talent and his talented fear. Kageyama’s home is at Karasuno, where he found his partner, his team, his precious second beginning. And his home is at the hearth, a hearth once deeply nurtured within him thanks to Miwa-nee and Kazuyo-san. His heart, the light of his shadow, is now in the forever home he entrusts to you.

You in his arms, sleeping so tenderly, so tangibly, you who gives him space and gives him all the time in the world for endings and beginnings. In the grand scheme of things, you are, just like the court, just like Karasuno, a beginning without an end. 

“You smell good, too,” Kageyama finally responds, gently rousing you out of your comfortable null.

“Hmm?” You mumble as he repeats his statement. “I, uh, oh, what do I smell like, Tobio?”

“Home.”

Simply stated and successfully rendering you speechless, Tobio takes your hand and places it right over his heart. It is beating fast, faster than usual, even faster than your own heartbeat. You look up at him curiously, smile perplexed as he shifts his head lower to press his lips to yours in a deep, lingering kiss. 

“Home,” Kageyama murmurs, “you’re home.”

Only you. This, Kageyama knows very well.

At Worlds, when he had stood with Team Japan, defeated in the semi-finals, Kageyama understood that you are it. And he had vowed then to never waste a Sunday away, to never let the fire in his hard-earned hearth wither away, to never let an end be the end. And he had realized, you are a constant. 

“You too, Tobio,” you reply, a softness overwhelming you as your cheeks darken. “You’re home.”

Kageyama looks straight at you. He is at the height of his career. He has never felt better. He is at the top, at the top of the V.League, at the top of the world. No one could forget his five consecutive serves against France at his Olympics debut so many years ago nor his miraculous quick with Hinata at the recent Worlds. Kageyama is rarely anything if not at the top. No doubt, his upcoming tenure in the European league will be an epoch for the history books, an inspiration to all underrepresented youths around the world. Right now, Kageyama is undisputedly and unstoppably at the top of his game, the height of his prime, the King of his Court.

Kageyama truly knows the meaning of being strong and free. And in this moment, at this time, Kageyama knows from the marrow of his bones that this is what it means to be strong and free.

He presses his forehead to yours, your noses gently touching. His brings his other hand to the one at his heart, and envelops yours in his. 

“Marry me.”

Since that day, despite that historic play with him and Hinata giving it their all, despite Team Japan standing just off the podium, when you came barreling down the steps to the locker rooms in a fit of tears and proud incoherent mumblings, Kageyama knew that this is it. You are it. 

And so, the next day, to the utmost surprise of his second family, he sent a message to the Karasuno VBC alumni group chat with a simple “SOS, I need her to marry me. Please.” Even as he endured Tsukishima’s taunts during ring shopping, even if he had to shut Hinata up countless times so as to not spoil this for you, even if he had to memorize Sugawara-san's “perfect” proposal plans, Kageyama knows that it is all worth it in the end. From start to finish, you are the one. 

That is why, he has decided, in this moment and time, to propose without the ring, without the plan. And boy, are his hands clammy.

“Okay.”

His eyes snap open. He didn’t even realize that he had them closed.

“Wait, wait, wait, what?” Kageyama frowns, pulling away from you. “That’s it?”

“What do you mean ‘that’s it’?”

“Like ‘okay’, that’s it?” Kageyama looks at you in bewilderment, completely thrown off by the simplicity and ease of your answer. “What about the tears? And the sappy declarations? And the stupid ‘yes, of course, a million times yes’ that they always say in those dumb movies?”

“Do you want me to say 'no'?” You laugh, already planning your indignant text to Tanaka-senpai for showing your simpleminded boyfriend — fiancé — all those romantic comedies.

“Wait, no!” He squeezes your hand and pulls you close. “No, never. Please.”

You sigh, pressing a simple, straightforward kiss to his lips. 

“Yes, of course, a million times yes, you dork,” you chuckle, reaching your free hand to cradle his face. Kageyama leans into your touch. “Tobio, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. You are my home, my world. And I understand why you want to propose now, and I promise you, when you go to Europe, whenever you run out of my stolen body wash, I’ll send you more. I’ll wait for you, I promise.”

Kageyama, once again, looks at you bewildered. His face flushes a deep, dark red as he buries his face into your hair. You hear the muffled “I love you, too”, soft and barely noticeable, but you need no further proof. His heart is beating in tangent with yours in a wild, beautiful dance. He has promised you a never-ending end. 

The sun is getting toasty on your back, and you are vaguely aware that you need to start laundry soon. But as you slip your hand away from his and nestles it in his hair, pulling him close, bringing his lips to yours, you let out a sigh. 

It is warm, he is warm. It is Sunday, and you are still in bed. It’s warmer than usual for a Sunday, brighter than usual for a Sunday, you are more in love than usual for a Sunday. For you are in bed late, with your fiancé in your arms, his heart beating quicker than usual, his smile against your lips wider than usual, and his love more overwhelming than usual. This time next year, you will perhaps be in different beds, on different days of the week, and who knows where you’ll truly be. Today is an end, an end to a beginning, an end to a chapter of your life. But you are okay with it. For you both know, this is also a promise, the continuation of a constant. You are home, and this home is the beginning to an end.


End file.
